


How to Avoid a Soggy Bottom

by spibsy (lucy_and_ramona)



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Baking, Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:44:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucy_and_ramona/pseuds/spibsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick calls Harry over to bake a cake, which he thought was a very clear euphemism. He forgot he was speaking to Harry Styles. He really should have known better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Avoid a Soggy Bottom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unapologetic_thirst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unapologetic_thirst/gifts).



> This is the first fic I've managed to finish in about six months and it feels really good. This fic is for Catie because she's brilliant and I hope that it makes her happy. :)

Sometimes, like right now, Nick Grimshaw becomes very aware that his life is better than pretty much anyone else’s life.

There’s a teenage popstar in his kitchen, starkers but for the pink flowery apron he _brought with him_. He’d mentioned upon his arrival that the apron was a gag gift from Niall, and he’s planning on telling his bandmate in detail about all the things he got up to while he was wearing it. 

The mating rituals within One Direction, Nick doesn’t think he’ll ever understand them.

But whatever their inter-band flirting techniques, the fact remains that Harry’s wearing the pink apron, with ‘Queen of the Kitchen’ emblazoned on it in matching pink stitched lettering. With one hip quirked to the side, he’s staring at the recipe book and Nick is staring, equally intently, at his bum.

Quite a nice bum it is, too, and on display as it is with the apron’s gaping back, Nick doesn’t think he can be blamed for the lengthy appraisal.

“Stop staring at my arse,” murmurs Harry absently, licking his fingertip and then turning the page of the cookbook. “I’m trying to make a cake, here.”

“Right, you are.” Nick releases a heavy sigh and shifts his eyes away from all the tempting skin on display. “What kind of cake are we baking? I think I’d like a good sponge.”

“Too bad, then, as I’m making chocolate.” Harry points a spatula at Nick in a very threatening manner. “And _we_ aren’t making anything. You’re to stay out of my kitchen while I make this cake.”

“It’s my house!” protests Nick. He doesn’t think that’s fair at all. Harry’s just swanned into his kitchen and stripped off, trying to be intimidating in a bright pink apron with his stupid long legs poking out underneath it and the sash in the back tied in a neat bow. Nick won’t stand for it. “I’ll stay in the kitchen if I like!”

Harry’s eyes narrow. He waves the spatula at Nick like a magic cookery wand. “You’re not to try to help. Don’t touch anything. If you ruin this cake I’m leaving you to make it yourself.”

“Could’ve made it myself, anyway,” Nick mutters. It’s very not true. He can barely crack an egg, and he doesn’t really know why he was told to bring a cake in to the station tomorrow morning, but he’s fully aware that Harry’s the only person who’d be willing to come over and bake a cake with him on such short notice. 

Harry’s good like that. He’d answered Nick’s text with a list of ingredients that he’d need, and when Nick had already had, well, none of them, he’d stopped off at the store and brought them as well. Along with his apron.

Thankfully, Harry’s a nice enough person that he doesn’t tell Nick _out loud_ that he’s full of shit, just gives him a sideways judgy look under his fringe and gets back to reading the recipe.

“Okay, I’ve already got everything I need,” he declares, shoving all his massive hair out of his eyes. “Just, just stay out of my way and it’ll get done and then we can go to bed.

Ooh, bed. Nick likes the sound of that. He settles back in his chair, crosses one leg over the other, and gives Harry his best ‘yes-I’ll-be-very-good-don’t-worry-I-promise-I-won’t-be-a-nuisance’ look, most often used on his mum and, more often, Matt Fincham.

Harry knows him too well to be fooled, but busies himself pulling out bowls and mixing implements and measuring cups. Nick had offhandedly mentioned that they could buy one of those premade mixes and nobody would be the wiser, but Pâtissier Popstar Harry Styles had given him the most horrified look Nick’s ever seen on a human being.

“Do it right, or don’t do it at all,” he’d recited like a particularly pretty inspirational day planner quote.

He’s muttering to himself now as he carefully measures out level cups of flour and caster sugar. It’s all very interesting, baking, but what’s far more interesting is the grand view it gives him of Harry’s thighs. When he’s bending down to make sure everything is even or however you do baking, the muscles in his legs stand out and Nick’s reminded all over again that he gets to have regular sex with the modern day equivalent of Michelangelo’s David if David had a giant cock and slightly more knobbly knees.

“This recipe’s really easy, actually,” he says to Nick, wriggling his bum about to a song that’s only playing in his head. Nick makes a sound that could be interpreted as ‘Yes, honey, I’m listening to you,’ but really just means ‘Damn, I want to bite that.’ It’s not his fault that Harry doesn’t know him well enough to differentiate between his hums. “You just kind of mix everything together except the boiling water and at the end it’s a cake. You could probably do this, even.”

He shoots a look over his shoulder at Nick, one which says, ‘I know you’ve been staring at my arse and you’re a vile pervert who deserves to have to fuck me as a punishment.’ Nick’s much better at deciphering Harry’s looks than Harry is at deciphering his hums.

“I could so do it!” Nick exclaims, easing himself out of his chair to look at the recipe over Harry’s shoulder, and coincidentally to get a nice handful of his bum. Harry’s got a deceitful bum, one he hides in tight jeans but one which is actually very squeezable. Harry squawks, quietly, but doesn’t remove Nick’s hand, so. Win.

“Yeah, bet you could,” Harry agrees. He grabs the cocoa powder to add that, as Nick peruses the other ingredients. 

“Oh, d’you think you’ve added enough flour?” Nick asks. The mixture looks a little wet, and it won’t do to have a wet cake.

“Hmm?” mumbles Harry absently before his head snaps up, his face the picture of abject terror. “Nick, Nick, don’t—“

Too late. Really, Harry shouldn’t have flour out if he doesn’t want any of it to end up in his hair. That’s just common sense. 

“I am not a cake!” howls Harry, struggling to get away from Nick without upending the bowl of batter. “Stop it, stop it, _stop it_ , Nick, go _away_ stop it—“ 

From that point, there’s a little bit of semi-cleanup necessary (“Flour _everywhere_ , you’re a terrible person.” “I was just trying to help!”) before they can continue on with the cake batter. They do at least get the flour mostly off the floor. Sort of. Nick reads down the ingredients list as Harry adds things, throwing him glowers after every one.

“Okay, now you’ve got to add the vodka,” says Nick, staring very intently at the recipe page. Harry’s head whips around and flour goes flinging off his hair in every direction.

“No,” he says flatly. “There’s no vodka in the cake. You’re lying, and I’m going to kick you out of my kitchen.”

“My kitchen,” mutters Nick, but Harry’s the person who gives him blow jobs, so he lets that one slide. “Not a fun cake at all, then, is it? They’ve probably written the recipe wrong, that’s what it is. What goes well with chocolate? Can we make rum frosting?”

“We aren’t putting rum in the frosting.” Now Harry’s in a snit, hands on his hips, trying to look intimidating with his pink apron disheveled and flour on his balls. “It won’t bake out, and you’ll get the whole station drunk. And Fincham will blame me, because he’ll know you didn’t have anything to do with making the cake.” He gives Nick a very serious look. “Do you want Fincham to _kill_ me?”

“Harry, are you really asking me if I want to witness a battle to the death between you and Finchy? Because I just want to know if we can do it on the show.” He ponders the logistics of that. “D’you think it’d lose some of its impact if people can’t _see_ it happening? We could get the studio cameras turned on, but I don’t know if you can show murder on the BBC website.”

Harry is clearly not so pleased with the direction of this conversation. “I would lose,” he says. “I would lose and die and then nobody would sleep with you ever again, because you’re a prick.”

“There is that,” says Nick. “So, no rum in the frosting, then?”

“No rum in the frosting,” Harry confirms.

“Damn. Guess we’ll just have to make a normal cake.”

And so they do, a normal cake with absolutely no alcohol in it, but containing _bicarbonate of soda_ , and assorted other ingredients that are less fun than rum. Harry guards the bowl with his entire body, which is unnecessary. He shoots narrow-eyed suspicious looks at Nick constantly, when he should be focusing on mixing the cake batter. If it ends up tasting awful, well, they’ll know who to blame: the person who kept getting distracted when they should be whisking.

Harry breathes a sigh of relief when he pushes the pans into the pre-heated oven, closing the door of it with a solid thump. “There we go. Now we can use the half hour while it cooks to make the icing. That’s just chocolate and double cream, so it’s easy. Even you couldn’t muck that up, I don’t think.”

“You give me too much credit.” Nick tugs at the ends of Harry’s well-floured hair. “Half an hour, you say? I think there are more fun ways to spend half an hour.” He gives Harry a deliberately lecherous look, waggling his eyebrows. Harry is unaffected. He just shoves his hair back off his forehead, adjusts his apron and steps across to the refrigerator to find the cream he’d stored there when he arrived.

Of course, to do that, he has to bend down, and he’s all naked-like and on display, and Nick only has so much willpower.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asks Harry when Nick steps up behind him. He adjusts his stance, though, balance shifting so that he can press back against Nick. “I’m trying to do some serious baking, here.”

“Yeah? Who’s stopping you?” Nick replies. He rocks his hips forward and relishes the soft noise Harry tries to muffle.

“Your cock’s a bit distracting, I’ll be honest.” Harry looks back over his shoulder with eyes like a dirty fairytale character, dark green and enticing. “Can’t you even wait an hour?”

“I could.” Nick gets his hands around Harry’s hips and holds him where he is. “I just don’t want to. Consider it your birthday present to me.”

Harry snorts. “Your birthday was four months ago, and I already gave you a present.”

“Well, it’ll be like, y’know when you get like a post-meal little piece of pastry to clean your palate? It’ll be like that.”

Oddly, Harry doesn’t seem to see the sense in that. “I’m making a cake,” he states firmly. “You’ll just have to wait.”

Nick huffs and lets Harry past him. “Why aren’t you wearing one of them Kiss the Cook aprons?” he asks, leaning against the counter and watching Harry pour cream over chocolate in a saucepan on the hob with disinterest. 

“Because you’d take it as an invitation,” mumbles Harry, tongue between his teeth as he gets a whisk from one of Nick’s drawers. Nick didn’t even know he owned a whisk. It’s probably one of Harry’s that he left here after one of their other baking escapades.

Nick waits until Harry’s glanced back at him, and then gives him the filthiest once-over he can manage. “Like I’m not taking this as an invitation?” he asks, eyes moving over the muscles in Harry’s back and legs, the way the apron’s bow in the back ties just above the curve of his bum. His bird tattoos are peering over the edge of the apron in the front, and the flashes of dark ink on his skin every time he moves are really too tempting to be legal. 

Harry Styles should be outlawed. Nick would be doing the world a great service. He’s going to put Harry on house arrest so that Harry can’t ever leave his flat.

“Don’t be rude,” Harry says primly. He’s gone all flushed on his cheeks. Might be the heat from the chocolatey cream, but Nick doesn’t think so.

“I’m not being rude, I’m being _honest_ , Harold.” Nick sighs heavily and drapes himself over Harry’s back. Harry doesn’t even struggle to balance him. Who’s really the rude one here?

“You know, you’re the one who asked me to come make a cake with you, and since I’ve got here you’ve done everything you can to make cake-baking as difficult as possible.” Harry continues to whisk every which way. “I can’t help but think you might’ve had ulterior motives.”

“Big words,” says Nick, impressed. He settles his chin on Harry’s shoulder. “I don’t know why you’d think that, though, I’ve been a perfect gentleman.”

“You’ve been a perfect something.” Harry turns his head and kisses Nick’s cheek before going back to his whisking. That’s the thing about Harry, is that even when he’s being an unbelievable little shit, he’s doing it so sweetly that you don’t care.

Okay, so maybe Nick had a slight ulterior motive for inviting Harry over to make cakes. How could he have known that Harry would jump at the chance to _make cakes_ rather than interpret it as the euphemism it was meant to be?

On second thought, maybe Nick should have known better. Harry’s the type of person who once postponed sex so that he could make fajitas for them to eat afterwards. _To replenish the energy we’ll lose_ , he’d reasoned.

"When do you think you'll be finished making the icing?" Nick asks with another kiss to the back of Harry's neck. Harry hums thoughtfully in reply and Nick can tell when he's softened to Nick's actions because he relaxes back against him.

"Suppose it won't take all that long," he says agreeably. "Just until it thickens and goes glossy and then I have to wait until it cools enough that it won't fall off the cake into a puddle on the stand."

"So you'll have time between finishing and the cake coming out?" Nick pushes his nose into the hair at the base of Harry's neck, which smells like green apple shampoo and a little bit like a pie crust. The combination's not altogether unpleasant, and Harry seems to like it. "To entertain me?"

"Nooo," Harry replies. He's started doing the thing where he draws out his vowels and his sentences go whiny at the ends because he knows that he can't resist Nick when he's turned the charm on. "You'll distract me and the cake will overbake. You don't want to go in tomorrow with cake that's gone rubbery round the edges, do you?"

"I'll be honest, I don't really care all that much." Nick tucks his fingers into the big useless pockets in the front of Harry's apron, pressing the palms of his hands against Harry's hip bones. "We'll just put loads more icing on it to hide the burnt taste. Everyone likes icing."

"Niiiiick." Harry's really sulking now, even if he hasn't stopped whisking the whole time, so it isn't like Nick can be distracting him _too_ terribly much. "I'm whisking."

"So you are," Nick confirms. He leans over Harry's shoulder to check the whisking's still going well. "And you're doing such a lovely job of it, I just want to reward you."

"This isn't a reward, it's torture." Typical Harry dramatics. It doesn't take too much for him to crumble, does it? He's like a poorly made Victoria sponge. 

"They should do this on Bakeoff, separate the boys from the men. It's all well and good if you can make a decent strudel, but can you make it with Paul Hollywood whispering sweet nothings in your ear?" Nick gives Harry's tummy a nice rub. He's a sucker for that. Really, he's more of a puppy than most actual dogs Nick knows, begging for treats and pets and drooling in Nick's ear while he sleeps.

"I'd rather Paul Hollywood than you," grumps Harry, completely unfairly. "Away with you. Let me finish my icing."

Nick bites his neck. Harry nearly flings the saucepan across the room.

"You know, you're not a very good baker, if you're so easily distracted," Nick says. He watches Harry right the saucepan and take it off the heat. Must be done, then. Time for more fun pursuits.

"Nick!" Harry shouts when Nick's hands dip into the sides of the apron. He does a half-hearted job of smacking them away and, predictably, goes all pliable and happy when Nick gets a hand around his cock. Already a bit hard, too. Nick knew he was protesting too much.

"What have we here?" Nick asks as he gives it a good stroke from base to tip. Harry gurgles a little. Nick's never felt more sexually competent than when he's fooling around with Harry. Harry's just so easy for it all the time, so responsive and pretty and perfect all the time; Nick's never met anyone like him. Doesn't think he ever will.

"There's only twenty minutes until the cake comes out," Harry whines. He wriggles his hips.

Nick laughs, quietly, against the back of Harry's neck, just to hear him let out a shuddering breath. "Plenty of time.”

"The cake's going to burn and it'll be all your fault but Fincham will blame me anyway," Harry grumbles. He does let Nick take his apron off, though, so Nick is okay with that.

"Fincham loves you more than his own mum, and never blames you for anything, even when it's definitely your fault." Nick double checks to make sure the flame's off underneath the burner Harry was using and then gets him up onto the counter. Away from the icing, because they'll need that later. For the cake. Probably.

"Don't knock anything over," Harry chides, pushing a kiss against Nick's hairline. Very smoochy, is Harry Styles. Sometimes he goes all soppy and sits on Nick's lap and kisses his face for an hour or so, and Nick complains and calls him a sappy twit but secretly loves it and they both know it. "We need the icing for the cake."

"We'll just say it's a massive round brownie," mutters Nick. He gets his hands underneath Harry's thighs to pull him into the position he wants, and Harry nearly flops backwards like an idiot, nearly hitting his head on the cupboard. Nick's in love with, essentially, a giraffe tongue that’s become self-aware. His life.

It's obviously got to the point where Harry doesn't actually care about the cake anymore, because he just mumbles, "Okay," and yanks at Nick's shirt until it's off.

"Shit," Nick says. "No lube in the kitchen, is there?" He scans the counter and feels the smile slide across his face as he reaches for the – hey. There's a hand around his wrist. "Hey, what?"

"You are not putting olive oil up my bum," Harry tells him. He sounds very serious. "Nick Grimshaw, you are not putting olive oil up my bum."

"It's so good for the skin!" Nick tries, wriggling his fingers. No use. Harry's strong for a boy made of pasta and rainbows. "Really, it's such a good moisturizer."

He doesn't think he's ever seen Harry glower so impressively, and he's had a few terrific glowers just since he's got here today. "You are not. Going to put olive oil. Up my bum."

Nick attempts to give him a good pout, but it's like the student trying to best the master. Nick's just out of his league in that regard. "Well, I've got to improvise, haven't I?"

"I'll smell like a Caesar salad!"

"Who's getting near enough your arse to know whether it smells like a Caesar salad? I can see it in the papers tomorrow, 'Popstar Styles was quite sweet but smelled a bit like cheese and croutons when I leaned over to pick my pen off the floor-'"

Harry hits him. And not the sexy kind of hitting, either. Boy doesn't realize his own strength sometimes. "You're not oiling my arse!"

And then he shimmies to one side, reaches into Nick's silverware drawer, and _plucks lube from somewhere inside it_.

Nick is aghast. He is appalled. He is slightly impressed. "When did you strategically hide _lube_ around my flat?"

"Like, a year ago, keep up, love." Harry's gone from looking embarrassed to looking smug and flushed, which is one of Nick's favorite expressions on him.

"I'm daffy over you," Nick informs him, kissing the pleased smile off Harry's face while Harry presses the lube into his palm. He still has flour in his hair and he has stupid tattoos and he’s in such good shape that it makes Nick want to force-feed him donuts, but he’s Nick’s idiot popstar boyfriend and Nick wouldn’t trade him for anything.

And now he’s made Nick go all sentimental in the middle of sex. This never happened before he started dating teenagers. He might as well buy a magazine with a Harry Styles poster in it and tack it up in his room.

Which he’s never, ever considered doing before.

Nick is jerked back to earth by Harry giving his ear a nibble and then licking his neck. It shouldn’t be sexy but it is because he’s Harry Styles.

“Am I boring you?” Harry asks, his fingers lingering at the buttons to Nick’s jeans. “Because I’m making a cake, you know, so I can check on that if you’d rather.”

“Shut up,” Nick laughs, getting a hand into Harry’s hair and tugging his head back. His eyes are sparkling like a cartoon character’s, and he’s having far too much fun, so Nick kisses him again before he slicks up his fingers.

The easiest way to get Harry to actually shut up is to get your fingers in his mouth. It’s one of Nick’s favorite discoveries. The first time they’d fucked, or the first time they weren’t drunk and pretending it didn’t mean anything, when Nick had really been paying attention, Harry had been chattery and nervous and Nick’s automatic reaction had been to shove two fingers past his lips and press down on his tongue.

Harry had made a desperate sound so loud that Nick initially mistook it for pain and jerked his hand away. Harry had grabbed it, then let it go, then gave Nick a grateful look when he offered his fingers again. Since then, Nick’s used it mostly to get Harry to calm down, or sometimes he’ll give him a few fingers to suck on while they’re watching telly, until they’re both lazily turned on enough to do something about it. 

Nick gives Harry two fingers to suck on, mostly to distract him, but also to get him to relax while Nick pushes one of the fingers on his other hand against Harry’s hole. They do this often enough that Harry’s not as tight as he could be, but Nick doesn’t really want to risk hurting him. 

“You good?” he checks. He knows the counter isn’t the most comfortable surface they’ve ever fucked on, and if they really wanted to, they could probably move to the couch. Harry won’t want to leave the cake baking alone, though. He’ll probably need to coo at it or something at the halfway point.

“I’m good,” pants Harry around the fingers in his mouth, all flushed down to the top of his chest. It’s warm in the kitchen not just because of what they’re doing, but also because the oven’s going at a fairly high heat and now they’re sweaty and Harry’s covered in flour. Nick really hopes that the flour won’t make a paste with all the sweaty friction.

Eugh. Disgusting. Not disgusting enough to put him off Harry, but disgusting enough that he’ll be sure to mention it to Ian tomorrow at the station while he’s trying to eat his breakfast.

Nick gets a second finger into him and Harry moans, muffled, his back arching. Nick’s goal here was to make Harry forget all about the cake, even though the smell of baking chocolate is strong in the air, and he thinks he’s almost managed it.

Definitely manages it when he finally pushes in after a swipe of lube over his cock, Harry so warm and tight inside that Nick has to focus in order not to embarrass himself. He’s pretty sure Harry’s just left claw marks on his chest, and he’s shuffling through the flour detritus on the counter in order to get closer to Nick, needy and clingy and frantic. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Harry mutters, his head tipping back, and his neck’s so lovely that Nick thinks it’d be a crime if he didn’t bite it. He doesn’t usually leave teeth marks on Harry, at least not in visible places (visible places to _normal people_ ; Nick wouldn’t have left any hickeys on Harry’s bum if he’d known the boy went traipsing around naked wherever he went, and so it’s not his fault if he accidentally helped traumatize Louis Tomlinson), but his neck’s very tempting at the moment and Harry can just wear turtlenecks if it’s a problem.

It doesn’t seem to be a problem if the groan it gets from Harry is any indication, his fingers fisting in the back of Nick’s hair to draw him into another kiss, open-mouthed and messy, their teeth clacking once before Nick fixes the angle and manages to find a neat rhythm between the movement of his hips and the movement of his tongue.

Harry’s murmuring his name into Nick’s mouth and it’s gorgeous, everything about Harry is gorgeous. Nick’s hands are braced beside Harry’s hips, and he moves them to leave bruises next to Harry’s hip bones, bruises he knows Harry will probably trace later while he smiles and thinks about Nick.

“Hey, hey, good,” whispers Nick, leaning away just enough that Harry has to strain to get his mouth on Nick’s lips. His words are swallowed by Harry’s lips, breathed into his lungs just as vital as the air they’re both breathing. “Good boy, that’s my good boy.”

Harry’s breath hitches and then he comes, wet warmth between their bellies and his eyes wide with his lips wet and well-kissed. Nick sweeps a thumb up Harry’s abs and presses it against his lower lip, watches Harry’s eyes close and his lips wrap around Nick’s thumb to suck off the salty bitterness. He fucks into Harry once more and comes, unable to take his eyes off Harry’s face even after they’ve done this so many times.

Nick’s attempting to bask in the afterglow when the oven timer goes off and Harry jumps so high that Nick’s dick just sort of… falls out of him.

“You’re getting spunk on the floor,” Nick complains loudly while Harry squirms off the counter on jelly-legs to check on the cake. “You’re ruining my afterglow.”

“You’ve ruined my cake!” Harry shoots back. His voice has gone slow and mellow, like the words he’s saying are actually marshmallows. “Oh, no, never mind. It’s fine. It’s just gone a bit lopsided. We’ll put more icing on that side.”

“See? You’ve made everyone happy.” Nick says it knowing that it’ll make Harry beam at him. Harry does so love making people happy, and if he can make multiple people happy at once, it’s like a dream come true.

Harry grabs oven gloves to take the cake out, and it does look uneven at the top, but if Harry’s pleased with it then it must not be too bad. 

Nick grabs the discarded apron and mops up his stomach before he throws it at Harry’s face and gives the kitchen a good look around. “Cor, it’s a disaster area in here. You really need to be more careful with your ingredients, Hazza. There’s flour everywhere.”

The indignant huff Harry aims at him will sustain him for days.


End file.
